This blog posts a three to five minute homily ideas for Sundays readings.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Tenth Sunday Ordinary Time Year C

Readings: 1 Kgs
17:17-24; Gal 1:11-19; Lk 7:11-17

A funeral procession is
transformed into a joyful celebration of life; a mother’s tears of sorrow
transformed into tears of joy! In the Gospel, we have an emotionally charged
story of Jesus meeting a funeral procession at the city gate of Naim. The dead person
happens to be the only son of a widow in the city. The mother is in front as
the funeral procession meets Jesus. On seeing the sorrowful mother Jesus raises
the young man to life when he unexpectedly says, "Young man I say to you,
get up!" Suddenly, the dead man sits up on the stretcher. Getting off the
stretcher in the midst of deep emotions, he embraces his mother. A funeral
procession is transformed into a joyful celebration of life; a sorrowful
mother’s tears are changed into tears of joy! It is no surprise that the people
immediately exclaim: “God has visited his people.” That is the Good News.

The Church’s ministry of
healing through Holy Anointing and the compassionate ministry of bereavement
touches the people affected deeply. In 2011anointing, I was engaged in hospital ministry
for six months from January to June. In those few months I was deeply touched
by the way families and those in hospitals appreciate our priestly ministry of
healing. I witnessed people recover even from extreme danger; I noticed real
conversion of patients deeply touched by God’s grace and led to the Sacrament
of Reconciliation. That might explain why Pope Francis on Holy Thursday
exhorted us all to go out to the people and use the Holy Oil of the sick; to go
out to the sheep and even smell like the sheep! Anointing with the Holy Oils
has a healing as well as a soothing sacramental effect. Going to the sheep
similarly is sacramental. When the shepherd visits the sheep, Jesus the Good
Shepherd is there assuring, comforting, securing and nourishing the sheep. That
is the Good News of God visiting his people!

So what message do
we take home this Sunday? 1) The readings reveal to us our God of life who
transforms death into life and sickness into wholeness; 2) We are challenged to
care for the sick, the suffering and the bereaved, and to be instruments of
God’s gift of life and healing; 3) We become servants of those who need our
care by being instruments and sacraments of God’s presence to them! Being
instruments and sacraments to others is precisely what St. Teresa of Avila
meant when she said,

“Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
With compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” (St. Teresa of Avila, Poems and Prayers)